


You're All Flying High, But I'm Drowning Down Below

by polandspringz



Category: gen:LOCK (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26449873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polandspringz/pseuds/polandspringz
Summary: After four years of no sensations, you couldn't really blame Chase for forgetting to tell the team that he couldn't feel.They're determined to reach him. Somehow.
Relationships: Julian Chase & Cameron "Cammie" MacCloud, Julian Chase & Kazu Iida, Julian Chase & Rufus Weller, Julian Chase & Valentina "Val" Romanyszyn, Julian Chase & Yasamin "Yaz" Madrani, Yasamin "Yaz" Madrani & Rufus Weller
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	You're All Flying High, But I'm Drowning Down Below

**Author's Note:**

> I dedicate this story to my gen:LOCK discord! I've been in it since the show's release and I probably wouldn't have continued writing if it wasn't for the community we've built in there. I've been working on this fic for over a year, but decided to finish it secretly in hopes I could surprise them. I hope, whoever is reading this, you enjoy!

After four years of no sensations, you couldn’t really blame Chase for forgetting to tell the team.

Although there had been instances when he had been removed from the tank to correct the placement of an IV or for cleaning, due to the presence of the nanotech lying dormant in his body, those instances were always very brief and fleeting. To keep his body stable outside of the safe containment of the tank while they worked for long periods of time, Dr. Weller frequently administered amnesia to Chase. In some ways, it was a welcome sensation. The numbing was a pathway to sleep he could no longer achieve on his own but, that numbness always seemed to come too fast and too soon.

As the tank was drained of fluid and opened, sometimes, Chase found himself wishing he could hold on for just a moment longer. But, his eyelids always closed just as Dr. Weller and Caliban’s hands brushed past to disconnect his body from the supports, and he felt nothing.

Chase was certain he still _could_ feel. He had lost three of his limbs when his interceptor crashed and the wreckage tore through his flesh, giving the nanotech a clean entry to chew up his muscles and feast off his nervous system, but he wasn’t paralyzed. He could still move his left arm, and he knew that there was _something_ that rushed past his skin when he raised it up to tap the glass. It was heavy at first, and it made his movements slow as he swam through it, but other than that, there was nothing distinct for him to connect a feeling to.

Along the way, he must have become numb to it.

The amniotic fluid that filled the tank, he could only vaguely remember the cold feeling of it the first time he woke up suspended in it. Now, it had simply become mundane. His body treated the liquid pushing on all sides of him no different than how the rest of humanity regarded the miles of atmosphere that tried to crush them with pressure. Perhaps, he would have become truly comfortable living the rest of his life inside the tank, treating it as natural as his life before it, had he not experienced the freedom his hologram and Holon gave him.

When he was still learning how to upload, and his Holon was still in early stages of design, his hologram was all he had to ground him with his old self. He still wielded control over four limbs in his avatar, and as he took a midnight stroll around the Experimental Science Unit’s headquarters two weeks after being overwhelmed with information and _choices_ , he found himself struggling to grapple with the reality that three of them were _gone._

He had mixed into the main lab, facing his body in the prototype tank while everyone else slept. Weller had performed surgery for days to save his life, and probably would have continued had his assistants not demanded he take a break. They had cut off the infected limbs and sealed them up with metal plates to keep the nanotech that was _in_ from spilling _out_. It wasn’t hard to look at the body that was floating in the tank. What was hard was calling it his own. With his hologram’s face reflecting off the glass of the tank, his artificial image overlaying the new reality of himself, it was hard to accept and believe that he was looking at himself, and not an unfinished clone of himself.

But, the Doc had said cloning was still far out of reach- even with regeneration being the solution to almost every war injury today- and neither were an option for Chase with that damn nanotech occupying more of his body than his own cells. Frustrated, he shut his eyes and banged his hologram’s fist against the tank, the pixels scrambling as they came in contact with a screenless surface. A buzz went through Chase’s hand as the pixels rejected the motion. He froze.

He did it again. Another buzz. He reached forward and tried to push his entire arm through the tank to the other side into the fluid. The projection denied it, but Chase’s entire arm, his _right arm, that should be gone,_ was alight with that buzz.

He fell to his knees, both fists sliding down the front of the tank as he collapsed at the base. His artificial chest began to rapidly rise and fall as his shoulders shook, and he clattered the tank with both hands, forcing a rhythm of that buzzing sensation to build as he struggled to breathe.

_It was still there. He could still feel it. He could still **feel.**_

****

_At least in this form…_

**_It’s not enough._ **

****

The lifeless, nanotech host with Chase’s face remained as motionless as a corpse in the tank as bubbles rose to the surface. But, slowly the displays on the monitors connected to the body began to flash and scream, and suddenly the room was dyed in red emergency lights instead of the calming blue, but Chase couldn’t find it in himself to care. He kept slamming against the tank, frustratedly trying to make that buzzing sensation stronger and stronger.

He wanted to feel the soreness of his skin as his fist swelled with the repeated blows. He wanted to feel the sting rushing up his arm, his _right_ arm. He wanted to feel it frustrating his brain, anger and aggression as it demanded him to stop, but all he got was the faint buzzes as pixels moved aside and reformed the hands around the glass blocking their way.

Footsteps pounded down the hall and there was a loud clang as the automatic doors were punched in and opened up- Caliban speeding up the emergency override by breaking them in as Weller jumped inside with two other scientists hot on his heels.

“It’s his heart rate! The nanotech might have activated again and started-” Doc cut himself off as he saw the crumpled hologram on the floor. His arm slowly fell, lowering out of where he was pointing for the assistants to go and instead, without glancing away from Chase, commanded, “Go.”

“Dr. Weller, but-” He raised his hand in a ‘stop’ motion, eyes still locked on Chase.

“It’s not the nanotech. I can handle it. Please, return to your rooms,” he smiled before folding his arms behind his back and striding towards Chase, “Some of us should get sleep tonight. Tell the rest of the emergency team to rest too. False alarm.”

The two assistants stared at their boss for a moment before they shrugged and made their way back through the doorway and into the elevator. Dr. Weller stopped when he was standing right behind Chase, and spoke softly.

“Caliban, please cancel the emergency alert and close the doors, please.”

There was shifting as shuffling as the android moved around the lab, the lights eventually fading back to the soft blue as he finished sending off the cancelation. Then, he went to folding the doors back into the frame and realigning them on their automatic track. When the lab was quiet again, Chase finally spoke.

“Doc,” his hologram whispered with a broken voice, “I know what you said earlier but… will I be… stuck in there forever?”

With his head bowed, Chase missed seeing Dr. Weller’s face crumpling with guilt as he pulled his glasses off his face and pinched the bridge of his nose, shutting his sunken-in, shadowed eyes as he forced his headache to dull before slipping back on his spectacles and a reassuring smile.

“Oh, Julian,” he soothed, kneeling down behind the young man, one hand settling down on the other’s shoulder, “I swear to you, I will do everything I can to help you.”

Chase’s hologram shut his eyes. Inside the tank, something shiny materialized under Chase’s eye for just a second before it was swept up by the current and rose to the surface in a bubble, glittering like a pearl as it disappeared.

* * *

It took many months for things to change.

But, like Doc had promised, they did.

It was still before the Anvil, before the rest of the world knew about gen:LOCK’s existence, and it was just when he was beginning to regain the feeling of having a _family._ He thought he had lost it completely in the Battle of New York, but now it had been almost a year since Chase had met Yasamin, and he felt like he had gained a sister again. She was no Dri, but he didn’t mind.

If you asked him what got the ball rolling, Chase would point to the night that he and Doc stayed up late in an effort to comfort Yaz after her Holon had very nearly been swiped by the Union. It was supposed to have been a small raid they were intercepting, but they had more resources than the Polity base that requested the help had anticipated. Chase was standing next to her, and while the Doc was speaking to her calmly, hugging her tight and telling her that _no one was going to take her away from them,_ she had turned towards Chase and reached out to try and bring him into the embrace too, but stopped when her hand cut straight through.

He chuckled and brushed it off, but Yaz seemed dissatisfied. _That_ was what sparked the question:

“Would I be able to touch him if he was outside of the tank?”

Chase’s answer was, “Of course, I’m not a ghost, you know.”

To which Yaz punched through the hologram’s face, sending Chase’s pixels out of alignment as he fake-gasped as they reformed. Doc pulled her arm back and calmed her down, reassuring her that Chase was only trying to be the funny guy because _it’s a sensitive topic, I’m sure he would rather we not discuss this now._

Chase didn’t see any reason to avoid it. Once he was realigned again, he just shrugged, “I don’t mind. We can talk about it.”

So they did. It was obvious that others’ could touch Chase’s body outside of the tank, so long as the nanotech remained _dormant_ and they were _assured of that._ Although Caliban could handle making repairs to the tank alone, Weller insisted on doing it because he was stubborn and refused to let Caliban bumble around while he shouted orders from behind protective glass. Although, Chase had overheard many phone calls with the Colonel that insisted he do otherwise. But, there was still no guarantee that Chase would feel anything from the experience.

Still, Yasamin confided in the two of them-

“I would like to touch him. At least once. To know that he is real.”

Doc smiled, “Then, you can assist me the next time we do a check up. Perhaps we can run some tests while we are at it. See if he registers any feeling.”

“Sounds good to me,” Chase said.

But, when he got in his Holon one day after weeks of seeing the Doc slave over mysterious upgrades, nothing prepared him for the experience of feeling _wind_ rushing over him. He could feel it pushing him back, buffeting underneath the armour of his helmet as if it had a real face and not metal. He had almost short circuited, and Yasamin herself seemed surprised at the new sensations, and was bombarding the Doctor with questions over their channel. She ran past Chase with a confused expression, but any snap about telling him to hurry up died as she felt the wind rush through the hangar again.

“You can feel it?”

“Yes. Yes! It’s-”

“Cold, right?”

“Yes! This is California though, I thought it would be warmer?”

“Go outside!” Yaz gestured and Chase ran ahead of her, skidding to a stop as he stopped on the concrete runway.

A beautiful cerulean horizon line stretched out before him, just beyond the gray of the ESU’s training grounds. The ocean was rough today, crashing hard against the side of the raised base, and Chase wanted to run at it, jump straight on in and plunge. He had been trapped in liquid every day, but this was different, this water he would _feel,_ he would feel the chill of it, feel the rush of bubbles and air flying around him. He took a step forward, but a hand caught a hold of him and he was jerked to a stop.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get your hopes up,” Yaz whispered, but Chase didn’t let it bother him. He was brought back to reality when he saw her armored robotic hand on his own manufactured arm. He smiled at her as they met each other’s gaze in the mindframe.

“Don’t worry about it, Yaz. My brain’s in here right now, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to fry everything if we don’t have a backup. Besides,” her body floated to stand beside him, “I can _feel_ the sea breeze again. I forgot what that was like.”

“New York is by water too, is it not?” Her Holon let go of him and followed him to look into the distance.

“Yes, but I lived deeper into the city. You would only taste the ocean air if you lived right next to it, but Mom always took me and Dri during the summer. One time, we even drove down to New Jersey for the beaches. Whenever we went over the bridges, Dri would stick her head out the window because she didn’t want to wait to smell it.”

Yaz shifted, “Can you smell it?”

Chase tried, “Not yet. I’m assuming there is a lot more that has to go into that, right, Doc?”

As if on cue, the Doctor’s hologram materialized a few ways in front of them, “Unfortunately for you Julian, yes. It may take a long time, but I am confident by the time we reach that point we will have come so far with gen:LOCK and our research about nanotech that we will remove it from your body so we can regenerate you fully.”

The older man folded his arms behind his back and, turning to face both of his recruits, beamed at them with the sun shining on his face. Chase had to admit that, at the time, he did feel some fondness and gratitude towards the man, who had become somewhat like a father to him with all of his time and dedication focused on helping him. Chase spread his arms out as the current whipped up another cold wave of air, letting it buffet him, and he wished he had wings again so he could soar through the sky and push through the air, creating sensations all over him without having to wait for each rush of wind.

“Chase,” Yasamin’s voice was quiet again, and she was fidgeting, eyes cast downward even though they were the only two things in the mindframe’s visuals, “Do you think that… since we can share our minds in here… If we sync up, you might be able to feel something too?”

Chase stiffened, but forced another white smile to adorn his face, “You don’t have to force yourself Yaz, but thank you. I’m fine with just right now.”

“It wouldn’t be forcing me- I thought you would like a hug or-” but Chase was already floating away, his Holon started to move towards the training course.

“Don’t worry about it, Yaz. This is actually _too much_ stimulation for me right now. Having nerves again? I must be burning through my uptime already! Let’s go.”

He heard Yasamin hesitate, but soon her Holon was clambering after him, heavy feet pounding upon the ground as they left Dr. Weller waiting by the dock. If he had anything to say about this, he kept his mouth shut.  
  
Chase was thankful for that.

* * *

“What do you mean he can’t feel anything?” Cammie gestured towards his tank even though his hologram was standing beside her, “How long has he been like this?”

“About four years,” Dr. Weller said, spinning around in his chair.

“It’s fine, Cammie. I’ve gotten used to it by now.”

“He _can_ feel things when he is inside his Holon. I specifically added that feature in to help him interact with the physical world. Unfortunately, that’s why the rest of you can feel pain when something happens to your Holon body too.”

Doc’s voice dropped at that last sentence. Cammie’s mech having its head ripped off was still fairly recent, but whether the girl ignored it or just didn’t pick up on the implication, she breezed right past it.

“But it’s not the same right? Our Holons are too clunky to even hug you! You mean your hologram doesn’t feel anything?”

Cammie’s expertly aimed poke missed as Chase teleported to the other side of Yasamin, and the girl just doubled her efforts and charged him until Valentina caught her by the scruff of her collar.

“Nope. You’re all just registering as little buzzes to my brain. But, it’s cool.” He tried to put on his most reassuring smile for the youngest member. She seemed to buy it after a minute of scrutiny, and dropped the conversation.

He should have put more effort into making Valentina and Kazu believe it, but he didn’t think they really cared enough to do something.

Until training happened.

It was the same mix of group exercises- trying to get past the Vanguard, obstacle courses for Cammie to acclimate better to movement, and sparring- but everyone was acting out of sorts, at least to Chase it seemed. Yaz seemed to talk to him more during training, although normally she was silent as she soloed her way, charging through the maze before stealing the flag. Her and Chase had been working together in the program for so long, they didn’t need mindshare or communication to read each other’s movements, or as she liked to put it-

_“-to understand you’re going to do something stupid, even though it will probably work.”_

Today though, Chase’s music stream was interrupted just as he made a sick shot into the hoop after charging up the cliffside with the basketball to avoid Kazu. Yasamin’s voice cut in through his feed, even as she was in the middle of fighting Valentina in the ring.

“How are you feeling? You’re not doing those tricks just to burn through your uptime, right?”

The ball swished through the net and Chase lowered his arms down as he skidded back down the rocks. The lenses of his Holon’s eyes meshed together as the lights dimmed as he sighed.

“You know we aren’t on a private network. Everyone can hear this conversation, you really wanna talk about this right now?”

Kazu, who was bumbling after the runaway ball, stopped as he picked it up, glancing over at Chase who was stopped at the base of the cliff. Valentina’s head looked up as Yasamin’s voice came over their channel, even though the yellow Holon continued an onslaught of strikes.

“Of course I know it’s not private. Everyone has been listening to your playlist for the past hour. Turn it down, please.”

“Fine, fine. But guys,” Chase said, “can you give us some privacy?”

“Kind of hard to do when you’re all talking so loud!” Cammie called out from where she was on the grounds. Last Chase had seen, Miranda was making her do more jumping exercises across the courtyard to get more used to snapping from low to high in the Holon.

“Well, you heard ‘em, Yaz. Let’s save this conversation for later. Kazu! Let’s go another round!”

Yaz sighed over the channel, “I was just checking to- Woah!”

Valentina’s right hand suddenly jutted out in a cross, Yasamin ducked out of the way in time and the fist soared cleanly past and over Yasamin’s shoulder. Before she regained her bearings though, Valentina circled the arm above Yaz’s head to hover above her other shoulder, gripping it tightly before their left hand came up and slammed her in the jaw, knocking her to the side like a ragdoll.

She slammed into the sides of the ring and instinctively clutched the jaw of the helmet as she glanced up at the purple Holon stalking over to her.

“He told you to shut up, let’s leave them to their game. Besides, you need to keep your eyes on _me.”_

Yasamin pushed herself to her feet and lunged for Valentina’s legs with a shout, invigorated.

_“So, kyoudai,”_ Kazu said as he spun the ball, “ _Want to start playing fair?”_

“Come on man,” Chase laughed, “You could’ve chased me up there? Why not use some uptime to increase your speed?”

_“Nah, I’m not meant for those crazy jumps and flips. I prefer sticking close to the ground.”_

Kazu punctuated his statement by jogging over to Chase, his Holon’s heavy steps slamming into the dirt and kicking up dust as he bounded forward. He clasped one hand on Chase’s shoulder as he dropped the basketball into the other’s palm.

_“Now, let’s play something **I’m** good at, like baseball.”_

Chase’s brain stilled as he felt the weight of Kazu’s hand against his shoulder. Kazu himself seemed startled when he felt Chase’s apprehension in the mindframe. To him though, his fingers just curled over the heavy armor, then pulled off suddenly when he felt the other stall. It wasn’t awkward, just surprising. Kazu’s hand floated above Chase’s shoulder, and then he narrowed his eyes, and slowly placed it back down.

_Warm. The Holons were machines, and there was always the chance of overheating, but the heat from underneath the armor was different. It was present, radiating. Their armor sets were exactly the same, save for Chase and Yaz’s having a few enhancements, and Kazu had dusted off his shoulders many times to clean off the dirt that piled up whenever Valentina used him as a launchpad, but this felt different. Underneath his armor, it was just him, but underneath this armor..._

He patted Chase on the shoulder twice, before giving him a strong squeeze. The blocky fingers of the Holon skeleton were much larger than his own, and Chase’s mecha body was much, much different than his body inside the tank. But, Kazu smiled.

_So this is what Chase felt like._

_“Come on, before the Colonel finds out.”_

Chase breathed again as Kazu’s hand slipped away, and he let out a sigh he had been holding in before turning around to chase after the older man.

“She’s gonna have Doc’s head if your swing breaks another strider!”

* * *

A few days later, they all were lined up practicing their shooting. Valentina slowly crept away from their spot, waltzing behind the group before their fingers trailed across Chase’s back. The armor dulled the sense, but Chase still flinched and missed the shot. Yaz fired her shot and glanced over at him, confused, but stopped when she saw Valentina creeping behind him. She turned back to firing, but listened as Valentina’s voice came over the channel.

“Would you perhaps be up for a spar?”

“You? Missing firing practice?” Chase quipped.

“I may like to slink off on my own, yes. However, having to stand around and shoot is no fun at all. Besides, the Vanguard wants me to work on my teamwork abilities, so why not?”

“Not really sure it counts as teamwork if you’re beating me into the ground.”

“It will be a good chance to get to know each other. I feel as though we rarely have spoken outside of the team. Kazu is fun to play with, but I grow bored of his predictable movements.”

Kazu shot too high towards the sky, and the bullet clipped the side of one of the building’s roofs, _“Hey!”_

“Ugh, just go, Chase,” Yaz said, exasperated, “If two keep on distracting everyone, nothing will get done.”

“Oh! Can we all come watch?” Cammie asked.

Chase looked towards one of the cameras, “Are we good to take a break, Doc?”

Inside the lab, Dr. Weller pulled away from a series of blueprints he was writing on, to glance at the five Holons staring at him. He waved his hand dismissively even though they could not see him.

_“Yes, yes! Go have fun. I trust the Vanguard to supervise if anyone tries to modulate their fear response again. **Cammie.”**_

****

“Oh come off it, will ya? I haven’t done anything like that since!”

“You heard him,” Valentina said, and placed their hand back on Chase’s back just to trace it along the width of it before slipping away again, “Let’s go.”

The fight went as Chase expected. Sure, he had more experience than their new teammates, but Valentina was always an enigma. Even inside a closed ring and with bodies so big, they found ways to hide, to sneak underneath Chase, and stealthily land him in a chokehold before tossing him to the ground. It was frustrating to be shown up in front of all his old friends, as even Migas had mixed into the courtyard with his hologram to watch the fight, but there was something more nerve wracking that kept stealing Chase’s attention.

Valentina was touching him.

_A lot._

“Knock it off, would you?” He hissed as he dodged another swing from them. Valentina stepped back and tilted their head slightly. Had they been in their human body, Chase would have seen them raise an eyebrow.

“At what?”

“Touching me.”

“Hand-to-hand combat like this requires touch. I thought you were aware of that?”

“Don’t mess with me like that. You know what you’re doing.”

Chase pointed a finger at them. The rest of the team sitting nearby looked at each other in confusion. Valentina stared at the accusatory hand in front of them for a moment before they shrugged and yanked it towards them, tugging Chase forward so they could strike him in the middle of the back with their elbow. Then, they were jumping up and over him, flipping in the area as they moved behind him to deliver another strike.

Chase felt it again. Their hand dancing over his back as he fell forward. He whipped around, angrily.

“I told you to stop that!” He roared. Valentina stumbled backwards as Chase suddenly rushed them. Valentina’s legs hit the bars surrounding the ring, and Leon prepared himself to order for Chase to be pulled from his Holon, but then Valentina shot their leg out and Chase tripped. Valentina stood up in time and pressed their hand squarely in the center of his chest, and pushed.

Chase fell in the center of his ring, and stared up at them. The harsh sunlight glinted behind Valentina’s head, which with his mechanical eyes caused no pain, but Valentina’s figure became cloaked in shadows as they were backlit. Chase could only watch their silhouette as they flexed their fingers, staring down at their hand.

_So this is what Kazu was referring to,_ Valentina thought. They glanced down at Chase, who somehow looked dumbstruck despite the limited expressions of the mechanical face.

Valentina reached out a hand to him.

“I apologize for being so rough. Perhaps I did go a little too far.”

Chase stared at their hand.

“But, I did get to learn quite a bit about you. Let’s do this again, sometime. Maybe then, you’ll beat me?”

It took him a moment, but Chase finally smiled at the thought of the challenge. Valentina saw his Holon’s eyes adjust for a moment, the blue light stuttering as if blinking before they glowed brighter once more. Chase reached up and clasped their hand tightly.

“Alright. I won’t go easy on you next time.”

Valentina felt the pulse in their grasp, and pulled him to his feet.

* * *

There were more instances after that. Perhaps Chase was just hyperconscious of it, now that everyone seemed to be talking about it more, but he had to wonder if the team was intentionally going out of their way to touch his Holon whenever they were uploaded. The number of times he had been slugged or wrapped in some sort of hug before being suplexed by Kazu suggested otherwise. Valentina began making more offers to brawl, but they ended all of their fights with a handshake now instead of how they normally waltzed over their opponents and off the field, _much to Yaz and Kazu’s continued annoyance._ Chase knew these little things had to be a result of the conversation they all had, but he decided to let it go. Nothing good came from him getting angry about something so small.

Besides, touch was… nice. Even with his hologram, he had no problems trying to wrap his arm around Migas or even the Doc and Yaz. He couldn’t feel it, but he knew that the gesture still meant something, and it wouldn’t be the same with his gigantic robotic arms and their small forms. He could technically touch Yaz with his Holon’s build but, each time he did that, she would creep closer to him in the mindframe, and he would run away.

But, touch with the other Holons he could handle. Touch was acceptable. Touch was good, even when Cammie ran up and tackled him as soon as she got in her Holon as a good morning, afternoon, or evening as thanks for playing with her in the Ether.

What wasn’t good was when Cammie asked him the sleep question.

She had been staying up late apprenticing under the Doc to learn more about gen:LOCK. While Chase usually stayed in his tank at the end of a long day, Cammie’s presence made him uneasy, so he let his hologram roam around a bit more to observe her note-taking and tinkering. There seemed to be no harm to it, as she was mainly working with the armor and mechanical build of the mechs themselves, but one day while the Doc’s back was turned to his own project, Chase walked by and caught a glimpse of her display blown up with his personal data.

“Hey! What the hell is this?”

“Oh, Chase!” She hastily closed the screen, tucking it away into the toolbar on the holograph, but Chase reached over and pulled it back out, “I didn’t mean to, I was just-!”

Chase didn’t mind Yaz and Weller discussing his condition. He thought he was fine with the rest of the team knowing too. They were just facts at this point.

Or so he had been telling himself. But seeing Cammie with all his files on screen made something in him panic.

“Doc, what’s this about?”

Dr. Weller merely turned around, blue eyes behind his glasses calm and collected as always, only the slightest wrinkle suggesting annoyance, while the crow’s feet at the corners showed wisdom and understanding. He folded his hands in his lap, “Cammie is preparing for the day she needs to take over the program.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Doc isn’t going to live forever, y’know,” she scoffed, “It’s important I know about each one of you now so I can help select future recruits and keep you guys safe in the Holons.”

Chase saw his old Vanguard photo from four years ago blasted on the screen. Brown eyes and a normal face and hairline, uncorrupted by metal plates holding him together from all sides.

“Why does she need to see my information? Why isn’t she looking at Yaz’s? Or Valentina’s?”

“Now, Chase, I understand the hostility, but-”

“I already looked at those,” Cammie folded her arms behind her back, “There isn’t much I need to know about everyone else. You however, in the event we can’t regenerate you, there are many other things we have to take into consideration. If you’re still applicable for gen:LOCK, if you aged out, if you-”

“Alright, _I get it,”_ Chase hissed with a little more malice than necessary. He pressed a hand to the temple of his hologram. In his real body, he could sense a headache coming on. _He still felt those. Somehow,_ “So, you’re just looking through our files. That’s all?”

“Well, I did have a few questions, but since you showed up-”

“Cammie,” Doc intervened, “I think it would be prudent to have our discussion in the new year revolve around this.”

“I read that it has been difficult for us to decipher which parts of you retain a sense of touch, but in the Holon, your senses return. We knew that already. If you don’t have any sense of touch in your real body, I would say it’s related to your spinal cord damage and not damage to the brain, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to upload-”

“Cammie,” Doc warned, “ _Tread lightly.”_

“I know. I know- But, spinal cord damage doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, you lost some of it, but only the parts for control of your lower half, and pretty much any organs you lost. So, it doesn’t make sense for you to lose all sensations. So, that leaves us with your brain.”

She swiped and pulled up a spinning image of his brain.

“But! What I’m concerned about is the signs of damage and stress that are appearing on your brain data. If you’re gen:LOCK compatible, then you should be super neuroplastic, and recover from any sort of stress quickly. Heck, even though I’m still shaken up about my head being torn off, my scans don’t show as many signs of PTSD as you’d expect.”

Chase sighed and crossed his arms, “And? I’ve seen a hell of a lot more combat and lived through a hell of a lot more than you. You think I wouldn’t have some damage to my brain?”

“That’s the thing though,” She said, flipping through the screens, her left hand pulling up an itemized list of medical records documented with dates that continued to scroll as she turned back to Chase and rested her arms on her lap, “All the dates from when these abnormalities and flare ups on your brain appeared are from a long time _after_ the Battle of New York. At first I thought it might be an adjustment from uploading, but Val, Kazoo, and I aren’t showing any signs either. So, what’s the deal?”

Chase looked to Weller, giving the man permission to speak. With a sigh, Weller began.

“Cammie, if you must know, Chase has been suffering from insomnia.”

“Insomnia? Why not just pump him with sleeping meds then?”

“It’s not that simple. I know you know, but your minds are incredibly important. Sleeping medication may be a temporary solution, but long term use and _overuse_ can have adverse effects on the mind.”

“Besides,” Chase mumbled, “We’ve tried that already.”

Cammie’s mouth formed into a small little ‘o’ before she turned around to trace her hands over the screens. She easily found a date she had skipped over, listing the medications that had been pumped into Chase early on in the gen:LOCK program, “Oops, sorry for missing that. But, is sleep deprivation really causin’ all of this damage?”

“We’ve been… analyzing it for a while. It’s difficult to determine with you five being our first test group, so we can’t rule out gen:LOCK as being a possible cause. Chase _has_ been uploading for a significant longer amount of time than the rest of you. However, we’ve discussed it before, and we both believe the issue is… much more understandable.”

He extended a hand to Chase, giving him a chance to speak or back out. Chase let his arms drop to his sides and the tension left his hologram. Cammie was only trying to help, there was no reason for him to get so defensive, but it was just… _hard._

“It might be post-traumatic stress, but I _feel_ that it’s just from being in the tank so much. Sure, I can be out here and with y’all and I can go inside the Holons, but, at the end of the day, I have to go back in the tank. I may not be able to feel the walls around me, but… I know they’re there. Sometimes, it takes me by surprise is all.”

“You’re claustrophobic? Hm, I didn’t think it would be that plain.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately, Chase can’t leave the tank. It is very difficult with the nanotech to contain what remains of him, and the fluid he is in helps to prevent it from spreading, and keeps his body from getting infected in it’s weak state.”

“So, Cammie,” Chase said, “Why are you so focused on my sleep?”

“Oh, yeah! Well, I’m no doctor-”

“I am!” Weller chimed in.

“Yeah, yeah. But, I’m wondering if you being sleep deprived is affecting your sense of touch.”

Chase looked at her incredulously, crossing his arms. She threw her hands in the air and groaned.

“I know it sounds dumb. I couldn’t find any research to support it, but I honestly was too set in the idea to have it proven wrong by some overly long academic journal. But, the way your eyes work is affected by sleep, right? So when you’re all groggy, and you’re slower at picking up on things going on around you, don’t you think that could also apply to how your brain receives signals from your hands to register if something is hot or cold? Your danger signals might just be operating slowly, and since you’ve been like this for a while, if you just get a good night’s sleep, we might start seeing some results.”  
  


Weller hummed, “She does have a point. Besides the senses I put into the Holons, your cyberbrains don’t require sleep, and you’re already operating faster than you are as humans, so your senses aren’t dulled but enhanced…”

Chase sighed and hung his head, “I mean, it’s a good idea and all, but like you saw Cammie, I’ve been this way for a long time now. I’m not sure what’s gonna help fix me at this stage.”

Chase missed the way Dr. Weller’s eyes darkened in thought when a call from Migas caught his attention.

“Woah, sorry guys. Migas wants to play a game of siege. Let’s talk later.”

He vanished in a flash of pixels, and Cammie watched as Dr. Weller stared _through_ the space Chase’s hologram had been residing in, boring a hole into the wall of the lab.

“Cammie,” she flinched when he addressed her, “for Chase’s benefit, let’s keep this discussion confidential, shall we?”

Dr. Weller raised a finger to his lips and smiled at her. She gave a nervous smile back and squeaked out, “Of course,” before swivelling around in the chair to squint at the files again. Dr. Weller looked back to where Chase had been, before he turned back to what he was working on too.

In the silence, Cammie tried not to scream as she stared down at Nugget in her lap, thinking about the text she had already sent to the team with all her findings.

She ran her hands along her face as she began to sweat. She just hoped no one would confront Chase on the issue before she could tell them the whole story.

* * *

Perhaps he had been too generous to give Cammie the benefit of the doubt, Dr. Weller mused as he entered the lab one night to find the team asleep on the floor in front of Chase’s tank.

It had been a rough day for all of them. There was no mission, but during training he could tell they all seemed distracted. Even the Vanguard seemed concerned by how they kept slipping up. Cammie’s performance had taken several steps backwards, and Valentina and Kazu seemed to be more isolated from the team than usual. Yasamin was back to being silent rather than talking, and Chase left everyone in the dust as he charged through the mountain range, only to overclock and burn through his uptime before he could continue.

Dr. Weller had to endure an earful from the Colonel all day about how useless his recruits were becoming, but he knew the root of her increased high-strung attitude was because of the appearance of that Union mech. It was almost a month ago now, but for that reason, they had been delaying sending the Holons out on any missions. They needed to be prepared for whatever or _whoever_ they may have to face when they got another look at it. (Or _him…)_

Dr. Weller walked closer to the tank. Caliban was going about his normal routine of programmed tasks, but steering clear of the sleeping team piled up at the base of the tank. Chase’s eyes were shut, and Weller didn’t need to look at the monitors to know Chase’s breathing was slow and relaxed.

_Good. It had been a while since he had last witnessed that._

Technically, it was incorrect of Chase to say that he _couldn’t sleep_ or _couldn’t dream_ anymore. The crash and the nanotech had destroyed his body, yes. But, that didn’t stop his body or his brain from requiring rest and other human needs. The first few nights adjusting to the tank were _hard,_ yes, but Chase did eventually learn to sleep. Dr. Weller had records of his REM sleep after the surgery, detecting several dreams even if Chase himself didn’t remember them. While inside the tank, Chase was hooked up to several IVs that provided him with nutrition and removed any waste to prevent infections. He could still eat and drink, just not in the traditional sense. The oxygen mask was there for a reason too, after all.

He was still a human. It was wrong of him to think of himself as anything less. But, Dr. Weller knew Chase was miserable inside of the tank, and he cursed himself everyday for not being able to find a faster solution to free the boy.

Because, that’s all he was in the eyes of the man. A boy.

He still remembered the scared look that flashed across Chase’s face when he first explained gen:LOCK to him. They had pulled him out of the wreckage, flew him all the way to the west coast and then laid him on a table only for Dr. Weller to stand over him and shout what was likely nothing more than mad science nonsense in the startled mind of the twenty one year old who was still feeling pain as the nanotech invaded his body.

Chase took the deal, and the rest was history. It should have been. But, the thing that kept Dr. Weller from sleeping at night was the memory of the look in Chase’s eyes when the deal was offered. It haunted him. The nervous glance to the side before speaking. Perhaps it was Weller’s fault for explaining it so poorly, but for a moment, and probably still to this day, there was a part of Chase that believed that had he not agreed to the gen:LOCK program that day, he would have been left to die.

_They were his kids now. He would never leave them,_ he always reasoned.

_But had he not agreed, what would you have done? You would have no obligation, no connection to him. You made a boy surrender his autonomy to become your scientific toy. Now you’re doing the same with Yasamin, Kazu, Valentina, and Cammie. You continue to search for more recruits, more children to steal. How do you-_

Dr. Weller took a deep breath and pulled off his glasses and wiped his eyes. When he was done, he slipped them back on and stared up at the tank. Kazu was asleep on Valentina’s shoulder, both of their legs stretched out as they leaned against the left side of the tank. Yasamin was against the right side, turned away from the group. Her head rested against the fogged up glass, just below where Chase’s arm was. Cammie was sprawled out across the three of them, her head slinking down Yasamin’s back, her legs and feet across Valentina and Kazu’s lap as Nugget slept on her chest. Dr. Weller smiled down at them.

He had told Cammie they couldn’t be sure but…

_Some days Dr. Weller believed it had been his technology that did more damage to Chase than the nanotech. After all, Chase had found sleep easier, even with the nanotech inside. It was right after his second birthday that things went to hell._

_Well, **everything** went to hell, _Weller thought as he stepped over Valentina and Kazu’s legs, making his way to the monitor next to the tank. He really should send them back to their dorm so they could properly rest up, but-

He tabbed open the page displaying Chase’s brain waves, and tried not to gasp.

He looked over into the tank. He looked back at Chase’s breathing.

Dr. Weller quickly and quietly rushed through shutting off any unnecessary noise and lights in the lab. He pushed Caliban over to his charging pad and continued to dim the place until only Chase’s bedtime mix could be heard drifting over the speakers, and the blue light from the tank illuminated the room. Then, he collected the things he needed and left the lab as swiftly as he could.

He boarded the elevator, and clutching the blueprints in his arms, he tried not to sniffle fearful that any noise would wake Chase from his slumber, and his first, real dream in four years.

Good things had come since expanding the gen:LOCK program. He silently wished they would continue for his kids for a long while.

* * *

Then, the Anvil was attacked by the Union.

The battle was an ugly, chaotic, panicked mess. Chase had stormed out of the eastern observation deck and immediately uploaded, taking his anger out on Nemesis as soon as he collided with the other mech’s neck. He knew if he didn’t stop him, everyone would die. The team, Migas, Miranda, _Weller._ But he wanted nothing more than to go up to Dr. Weller in his Holon and strangle more answers out of him, to make him understand the gravity of what he had done to Chase by not telling him he was just a _copy._

If he could taste, he was certain he would taste bile whenever he said the word. As he swung at Nemesis, he had to wonder if what the other him was saying was true or not. Did he even deserve to exist in his body, _their_ body, if he wasn’t the original? Were either of them even the original, or perhaps he had died four years ago in the Battle of New York and the Doc had just copied his consciousness then. He had lied to him already, about the network going offline, about the mission being scraped, and he had believed him. Could he fabricate memories too? He had heard from Cammie about them being able to delete them, did the Doc go inside his mind and alter him to be the perfect, obedient soldier so he would agree to the program?

He had always thought since he first saw himself in the tank that something was wrong. But then Dr. Weller came in and comforted him. _Maybe he had been right all along. The body didn’t belong to either of them. It belonged to the Chase who was dead._

In the background of the fight, him and Nemesis heard the rest of the team clicking onto the network, and soon they were flying past Chase as they fought off the spider tanks and other Union soldiers storming the grounds. Kazu and Valentina synced up, and suddenly their minds went silent across the network as they became one. Yasamin crashed down next to Chase as he wrestled with Nemesis, and she reached out to him.

_“Chase, we should try and fight him together!”_

Chase continued to fire his gun at Nemesis as he struggled to free his leg from the mech’s claws. He couldn’t deal with distractions right now.

_“What’s stopping you?”_

_“No, I mean really together!”_ Yasamin shouted as she moved closer to him in the mindscape.

Her hand was so close to him, and Chase’s rage boiled as he thought about her touching him, getting inside his head. Nemesis yanked him closer, nearly disarming his gun and pinning him down. Chase sliced his arm across the space between Yaz and him, shoving her away and he shouted at her.

_“Let’s not do this now!”_

She recoiled and floated away, going silent in the channel. _Finally._ Chase only had a few moments to savor the peace and quiet before Dr. Weller was yelling at them to retreat. He punched Nemesis harder when he heard Doc’s frantic speaking. Then, Yasamin was back in his ear calling out to him.

_“Chase, fall back!”_

_“He doesn’t mean me, Yaz!”_

_“Chase!”_ She pleaded. And Chase grit his teeth as he prepared to jump Nemesis, hissing at the woman a reminder-

_“My body can’t run, Yaz!”_

His body slammed into Nemesis, and then the gen:LOCK channel went silent for good.

* * *

When they first landed and hid behind one of the mountain ranges, Yasamin immediately took control and began delegating tasks to everyone. She spared no moment to make sure they were aware of their rations and fuel, planning possible routes and trying to see if it was feasible to make it back to the ESU’s headquarters on the west coast. The entire day, she was nonstop in storming around the ship as she investigated every possible useful tool.

At nightfall though, things changed.

Kazu, Valentina, and Cammie had gone to bed. Chase was out in his Holon, patrolling the area to make sure no one was following them, and to clear his head by getting through his racing thoughts faster with the increased speed and clarity of his cyberbrain. Yasamin was still in the cockpit, ready to open the ship’s doors if they needed to hide the Holon from any sudden threat. She had gone quiet for the past hour, and Chase was going in circles as the rain pelted down on his armor.

He was somewhat thankful that the rain was slipping down in between the spaces of his armor. When the droplets touched the metal skeleton, he could feel the cold rush of it, like slime dripping down over his mechanical joints.

_Doc had really improved the sensory features of the Holons. It was practically like having real skin._

He just started to lift his hands to the sky when he heard it.

_“Chase…”_

Yasamin’s voice crackled over the mic of the airship. He turned around. He could barely see her sitting in the pilot’s chair, and so he walked back and crouched down so he was eye level with the windshield.

She was curled up in the chair, a blanket around her shoulders as she pressed the mic button with one hand.

“Yo, what’s up?” He asked, the blue lights of his eyes flashing as he zoomed in to see her better. Her finger traced down underneath and around the control panel of the dashboard, her arm limp and her eyes low. Then, when she nearly let her arm drop, she puppeteered it back to the button, pressing down once as she whispered.

“Can you come back inside? I want to speak to you.”

Chase blinked at her for a moment, but then knelt down properly, letting his Holon rest as he mixed into his hologram. Within a few seconds, Yasamin heard the electronic noise as pixels materialized by the doors behind her, but did not turn around. Chase strided forward with easy, steady steps, stopping behind Yaz with both palms up and his arms open.

“What’s the matter?”

She was silent, but Chase was patient. He watched as she slowly lowered her hand again, folding them both into her lap as she pulled up her knees and leaned back in the chair. She stared out at the rain pouring down from the sky and hitting the windshield. A ring appeared around Chase’s resting Holon as water bounced off it and back down again. If there had been any light left behind the gray, murky clouds, perhaps the water would have glowed.

“The Doctor…”

He heard Yasamin’s breath hitch.

“He sacrificed himself for us to escape.”

Chase felt his heart stop in his real body inside the tank.

“Are you serious?”

Yasamin ran her hands up and down the fabric of the suit stretched over her thighs, “He helped us escape. We were getting into the elevator when Union soldiers appeared. When the doors closed, there was an explosion.”

Chase cursed, “That’s just like him.”

He pressed a hand to his head and closed his eyes. All day, the others had been silent about what had happened and why they had fled. He had assumed it was everyone in shock over the sight of the nanotech drowning the Anvil, but now he understood.

“Well,” he ran the hand down his face to his mouth, pressing it against his lips hard as he struggled to bite back more curses, “At least it wasn’t the nanotech. I lived through that hell, if it was an explosion, at least it was mostly instantaneous and painless-”

“That’s not the point!”

Yasamin stood up from the chair and turned around to face Chase, an enraged scowl marring her face as she seethed.

“He sacrificed himself for us, Chase! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Chase stepped back, confused, “It does! Why do you think it doesn’t?”

“Because you’re not upset! You’re just standing here making snide comments and-”

“I’m not making snide comments. I’m in _shock,_ Yaz. I’ve gone the whole day thinking, yes, all of my friends and family in the military were just eaten alive by the thing that nearly killed me four years ago. But, I thought somehow the Doctor escaped on another ship.”

“Where would he go without our protection? We have Caliban, you know he would get captured right away without someone to guard him-”

“I was trying to be optimistic!” Chase shouted back, “Why are you fighting with me? What do you gain by yelling at me?”  
  


“I don’t know but the fact that you were so caught up in your fight with the Union’s you that you let him-”

Chase snapped, “I didn’t kill him, Yaz! You can’t force the blame of his death onto me like this!”

Silence rang out in the cockpit after that, and Chase was sure that they had woken up the rest of the ship with that. The rational part of his mind prayed that they would take the hint and not try and intervene. He caught his breath after a moment, and just stared at Yasamin. Her head was bowed so he could only see her brow etched into a scowl, her eyes scanning the floor as his words continued to process in her head. After a few minutes, when she didn’t respond, he turned to go mix back into his Holon.

“I understand you’re tired,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her, “You should get some sleep. It will help clear your mind. I’m sure everyone else is just as shaken up. They’ll need both of us to be level headed tomorrow.”

“Chase…”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting his mind seep back into his Holon outside.

Yasamin reached out and her hand phased through Chase. His eyes snapped open and he turned around. She fell through him to the other side.

Chase stared down at his chest, where her hand had just forced its way through.

“Yaz, you of all people should know that I can’t-”

She whipped around, and her face crumpling with angry tears, she threw herself at him again.

  
This time, she stopped herself so she was hovering over his hologram, the pixels continuously vibrating at every point of contact as she wrapped her arms around him, and tucked her head against his hollow chest.

Chase’s arms hovered by his sides, unsure of where to rest.

Then, he felt the gentle shake of her as she began to cry.

He relaxed easily, and put his arms around her.

He wished he could say he felt something during the exchange, some sorrow or grief or comfort in sharing this moment with the woman who had become like his sister _,_ but, the thought of her being family brought up memories of the Doctor, and Chase’s mixed up thoughts scrambled even more inside, and so-

He awkwardly glanced out the window as she shuddered close, and Chase was thankful for the fact that he couldn’t feel.

* * *

After being interrupted three times during the night by Union drones dropping Nemesis on them, Chase had downloaded after the realization Nemesis’s connection on the network. An argument about what to do with the technology erupted, and although Chase was still angry at Dr. Weller, now that he had been given more time to think, and process what had happened, he still felt it would be a disservice to what the man had done to him to just shut down the program.

_Especially since it was what gave Chase the little freedom he still had left. If Valentina, Kazu, Cammie, and Yaz just **left,** would he just be left behind in the middle of nowhere, with only his body in a tank for Nemesis to come and collect alongside him?_

And so, he spoke the words, and unwittingly unlocked the final message from the Doctor.

He felt Yasamin’s hand slide through his pixels when Dr. Weller’s hologram disappeared. She awkwardly retreated when she remembered. Chase’s fingers twitched as the buzz went through them. He looked down at Yaz’s face, who was still staring where her _father_ had vanished.

No. _Their father._

_He wasn’t just a scientific tool to the man. He had done nothing but care for him tirelessly. Chase was just too blind with rage to see it._

Then, later, once the team had tried going to bed again _, this time with more security in their minds about not being found,_ Yasamin approached him again. She leaned on his tank and spoke to him quietly, but the closeness frightened him and so he switched to his hologram again. Now with his feelings about Dr. Weller cleared up, his heart was only left to focus on the larger knot tangled inside of it.

_Nemesis._

He had come to accept that the Doc only lied to him about the mission, and that he was being paranoid with thoughts of him ever doing anything malicious like fabricating memories of the past. He was obviously only trying to protect Chase from falling into despair and terror. But, that left Chase alone with the realization that while he had remained unchanging during the years, something devastating had to have happened to change the other him into _that._

Was it maliciousness at being left unsaved? Was it slowly breaking trust in the Doctor and Polity that never came to his aid after disappearing? Did the original know he had been replaced, been copied? Did his sense of self warp into thinking he was so valuable, so important, that they would fight a war to rescue him, only to discover they never even needed him in the first place, just a copy of his mind?

But then Yaz reached out and touched him again, and Chase’s heart panged.

It wasn’t fair to her, to the rest of the team, to close himself off like this. He had regarded her as if she was an idiot for the past few hours for trying to get close to him, for thinking that he was real. The real him was inside the tank, everyone knew that, but that didn’t change the way Cammie tried to always poke him, the way Kazu had patted his back and called him his brother, the way Valentina would help him up after they kicked his ass.

Yaz was right, he was real to all of them. He just needed to start thinking the same about _himself._

But, the mess of knots in his chest wouldn’t subside, and so, he pulled away again.

He receded back into the tank, the buzzing of Yaz’s touch fading away as he hid behind glass, where no one could touch him, ever.

* * *

At RTASA, things were different. They felt like they all were playing a game of catch-up as they explained things to Dr. Jha and then to Holcroft, being given amnesty despite being an ever present threat to endanger the facility and also Holcroft giving them the timer to defeat Nemesis before they went forward with the future of gen:LOCK.

Their Holons needed repairs, so Cammie sought out getting financial backing with Jha from Holcroft so they could print the new armor. She had been running around for days, between helping direct where to place them on the Holon to modeling new skeletal designs on the CAD files.

A few days before the armor upgrades were to be finished, she sat down in private and went about dissecting whatever the Doc had left behind inside of Caliban’s mind. She had already been given files on monitoring Chase’s condition, and most of the things he had locked away was all the research on the early stages of gen:LOCK with Chase, the _incident_ that led to the end of copying- _Cammie shuddered when she finished reading, and locked that file back away where she found it-_ and the goals for the program had it not been militarized.

There was a set of files that were fairly recent though. The Doc appeared to have uploaded them only a few days before the Battle of the Anvil. Cammie nervously opened it, afraid it might be another confession like the recording of his final message or the copying.

A blueprint appeared on screen. Another CAD file? She squinted as she looked over it better.

She sat up when she read the title.

_Oh._

There was another set of things modelled in the folder. She pulled up that file too.

_Oh!_ Her eyes widened, and she excitedly began to read over and rotate the designs inside the file.

She had felt a bit disheartened when she realized how far back the prerecorded message was. Although she knew all the words the Doc had said did apply to how he truly thought of them, it made her wish he had the time to give them a more individual goodbye. Something more genuine than just a will and the end note of _“Be well.”_

They had been wrong. That wasn’t the Doc’s final message at all.

_This was, however._

Cammie copied the files into her own folder and then muted Caliban again, dashing out of the room as she sought out Dr. Jha.

* * *

Chase wondered if he had been forgotten about. Over the past few days, everyone seemed to have made themselves scarce. He didn’t mind being left alone in his tank, _usually,_ but he had grown accustomed to opening his eyes in their new dorm to seeing the rest of the group doing _something._ Whether Kazu playing the guitar, Valentina laying down as they logged into the Ether, or Yasamin reading, it had become a small comfort to him to know they were still together, even though so much had changed.

But one morning, he opened his eyes and everyone was gone.

At first, it was no issue. He could navigate in his hologram around RTASA as much as he did at the Anvil or the ESU. There were still scientists working around the clock, and soon enough, he found his team huddled in some corner of the base, talking amongst themselves.

“Hey guys! Why did you tell me we were having a meeting?”

He was met cordially, but they all seemed a bit too quiet. They wouldn’t give him answers about what they were discussing, and they all dispersed quickly after his arrival. He was left confused, and ultimately he decided to mix back into his tank.

A few days later, he was walking around again and spotted Cammie and Dr. Jha outside a conference room.

“Oh, nothing! I just have to talk to Holcroft again!” She said when he asked what was going on.

“Again? Is he pulling out of our deal?”

“It’s nothing like that, Chase,” Dr. Jha reassured him, significantly calmer than Cammie was, “There is another thing we have decided to build for the benefit of your team, but we require more financial backing before we go ahead with the project. We also must decide how soon we can construct it.”

“Oh? What is it? Did you find something cool in Doc’s files again?” Chase looked to Cammie, who smiled nervously.

“Uh, yeah! _Super cool,_ but like everything else with the upgrades, it’s a surprise! So you better stay out of the hangar until they’re done, or else I’ll block your hologram from entering without my permission!”

Chase laughed, “I promise, I promise.”

“Cammie, we should get going. Holcroft is waiting,” Dr. Jha ushered her inside. Although she cast a smile back at him as she closed the door, Chase stiffened. He caught the faintest glimpse of Yasamin in the back of the conference room before the door closed shut, and Chase had to wonder if the whole team was in there.

_What were they talking about without him?_

* * *

That night, Dr. Jha found Chase. She entered the dorm room and stood patiently in front of his tank, waiting for him to notice her. He was mixed into one of the observation decks, watching the sunset alone when he heard rustling coming from the dorm. Excitedly, he warped back into his tank, but his expression dropped when he saw Dr. Jha.

“Chase, wonderful, I have something I need to speak with you about.”

“Is this regarding what you all were discussing with Holcroft earlier?”

Her expression fell for just a second, but she quickly regained her smile and folded her hands behind her back.

“So you did see the rest of your friends in the room. I’m sorry we excluded you. Holcroft wanted to speak to them too.”

Chase felt nervous. Dr. Jha seemed honest, but he didn’t like the secrets that were floating around.

“Why not me?”

“Chase,” she cleared her throat, “Cammie had stumbled across Rufus’ instructions on how to care for you. As the sole investor in gen:LOCK, Holcroft has also been providing funding for keeping you alive.”

_Oh._

“So why wasn’t I in the room? You guys aren’t cutting me off, right?” Chase joked, but Dr. Jha seemed startled by that remark. A brief panicked thought went through Chase’s mind, and he couldn’t help but cut out his laughter, “You’re not, right?”

“Of course not, Chase. You are a highly valuable member of gen:LOCK. It would be irresponsible for Holcroft to pull out of providing support for you when you are the most experienced.”

Sensing his apprehension, she continued.

“I assure you though, Holcroft would never be allowed to simply cut you off like that. Not that I, or any of your teammates would allow that. I assure you, we were not discussing anything of the sort. We thought it would be uncomfortable for you to speak with Holcroft about such a topic though, since he can be brash and might have misled you.”

Chase chose to believe her and move past it, “So, why have you come to talk with me?”

“Although you and I have not known each other for very long, Rufus did keep me updated on your condition, and we here at RTASA are equipped to support you.”

“So, where is this all going?”

“Cammie noticed that in Rufus’ logs of you, you were long overdue for a check up. If you would allow it, we would like to remove you from the tank tonight temporarily. My medical team and I will oversee that you are safe and unharmed during the procedure. Do you agree to allow us to do this?”

Chase still felt that something was off, “Are you going to have to put me under to do it like the Doc used to?”

She nodded, “In Rufus’ instructions, he believes it to be the least shocking way to help your body adjust to the lack of fluid surrounding it. If you would like us to-”

“No,” Chase shook his head and sighed, “Let’s follow the Doc’s instructions. He kept me alive this long, I trust his judgement.”

Dr. Jha smiled, “Excellent. Then, in about four hours, we will begin. We will transport your tank to our medical wing right before then.”

She bid him goodbye and left the dorm with a wave. He was alone again. An hour before the start time, the rest of the team came in and helped Caliban walk him down. They all spoke happily and assured him everything would be fine, and Cammie told them all that she was _almost done_ with the upgrades and they would see them soon. Although Chase laughed alongside them and pressed his hand against the tank as they all patted the glass, as he was pushed through the doors, he couldn’t shake the fear in the back of his mind that this was _the last time_ he would see them again.

Cammie and Caliban stayed in the room as they set up Chase for removal. They administered the anesthesia through the IV that hooked to the top of the tank, and then, slowly began to drain the tank.

The last thing Chase saw was Caliban reaching out to catch him, but everything went dark and then he was gone.

* * *

Chase opened his eyes to water.

He had grown accustomed to first seeing the fluid that was aglow with the blueish light from the heaters of the tank. His eyes always took a moment to adjust to being hit with the harmless, but unnatural, liquid that covered his senses. He had learned to see through the fluid clouding his vision, to move his arm through the heavy gel to gesture what little he could to those who approached his tank.

This time, when he opened his eyes, however…

The liquid felt different.

It was _lighter._ Although he had grown used to the fluid to the point the weight did not bother him at all, the speed at which he felt his hand jerk awake and cut through the liquid felt _too smooth._ It was too fast, like if someone had submerged his Holon self inside of it.

He had to wonder if that was _true_ for a moment when he realized he could feel the individual bubbles in the liquid pebbling around the skin of his face, the oxygen mask keeping them from touching his lips, but they gathered around it all the same.

His eyes shot open as the sensations overtook him, and suddenly his arm was swinging out- _and there was no wall there to catch it._

Had he fallen into the ocean? Had RTASA sunk into the sea at last? Why was he drowning?

_Did they throw him into the ocean after thinking he was dead?_

And why was it so bright?

“Chase!” He heard Cammie’s scottish yip fizz over the channel that hooked him to gen:LOCK, the ether, and his hologram. This time though, it sounded more muffled. Not in a quiet way, but as if Cammie’s voice was echoing inside a helmet or a mask before it was being picked up by the microphone.

He glanced around to try and see where her voice was coming from. It was strange, it was like her voice was buzzing not only over the signal, but through the liquid too. As he tried to look around, he was stunned for a moment by the realization that he _could_ turn his head. He could always move it somewhat, but for the first time in _years_ he was able to touch his chin to each shoulder, and then he realized _he was swimming._

There were still tubes connecting him and supporting him up, but as he moved his arm about, he realized he was drifting. Through the blue, oceanic like liquid, he swam, slowly coming to realize the more he _thought_ about where he wanted to go, the more the machine supporting his torso helped him glide that direction. He smiled behind the mask and glanced where he thought was _up_ as he heard the rest of his team’s voices filter through the speaker.

“It appears he is happy with the new arrangement,” Valentina’s voice wasn’t muffled like Cammie’s was. It sounded far away though.

_“You can see him through there? It’s too foggy for me,”_ Kazu said.

“I’m going in. Cammie! Are you ready down there?” Yaz called out, to which Cammie responded cheerfully.

“Yup! It’ll take a moment to swim down, but I promise you it’ll be worth it!”  
  
_Swim down?_

Chase turned around.

Cammie was _there._ Inside the water. She was floating a few feet away behind Chase, a clear, helmet encircling her head and covered in the same hexagonal patterns as their holograms loading in were. She wasn’t wearing her gen:LOCK suit, but instead a suit he had never seen before. It certainly wasn’t Doc’s design, but he could see the influences were there. It was a green diving suit that covered her hands and feet completely. Although she appeared to be free floating, Chase could see a harness of some alloy that reached all the way up to wherever the surface was. She was typing into a screen that was illuminating from her wrist. When Chase met her eyes, she grinned, and waved.

“Cammie!” Chase cried out, and swam towards her.

“It’s me! In the flesh! Well, in the suit, I guess. You like?”

“So this is what you guys were up to?,” he laughed, “You put me in some sort of aquarium.”

“Of course not, you dummy. But, I suppose it is like a big fish tank. We built it all in one night. It was still hard to keep it a secret from you though.”

“Well, you did a good job. This is amazing.”

“You’re not claustrophobic?”

“Not at all!” Chase swam in a circle, his arm freely gliding through the water. He faced her again and watched as her green eyes pierced through the helmet, practically matching the hue of the glowing water. The bubbles crawling to the surface pearled around the screen of the helmet and surrounded her face as she smiled at him. There were faint distortions on the mask like when the holograms bumped into something. She swiped the screen on her wrist back into her watch.

“Try doing a flip!”  
  


“I can do that?”

“Hell yeah you can! We rearranged all the tubes and wires keeping you alive, and outfitted you with a harness that spins. Look, mine does the same!”

Cammie arched back and flipped backwards like a mermaid, the alloy attached to her harness rotating to the side as she curled over and back under it again. When she was swimming down, he could see how the metal bar connected to a protruding disk shape on her back and that was what spun and bent the metal into different angles.

“You try!” She said, and Chase took a moment to try it himself. It was a little different than when he used to do flips at the pool when he was a kid, because back then he had legs that would push off and kick and bring him around in the circle, but he didn’t need them now. When he completed the trick, he moved towards Cammie, excited.

“You gotta tell me how this all works. This is amazing!”

“I know, right?”

“How am I swimming?”

“We took the signals that read your nerves signals to control your hologram away from your body and hooked them up to this machine. Now, instead of it reading it and transferring it to an avatar like in VR, it just moves in accordance to how you want to move. Quite simple to program actually, since we already have so much tech that reads brainwaves, it was practically a step backwards for gen:LOCK, but building all this was what delayed it.”

“Delayed it? But you built it so fast?”

“It was actually the Doc who designed it.”

Chase stopped swimming.

“He came up with the blueprints, at the very least. I found them in the files saved in Caliban. He had been thinking about it for years, I think, but Holcroft wouldn’t give him the funding. He wanted Doc to put all his focus into gen:LOCK first, but Doc never stopped thinking about it. This was his final design. He uploaded it only hours before-”

“Cammie, you don’t need to explain. It’s wonderful. I’m thankful. So, that’s what you were actually talking to Holcroft about. I thought you were discussing killing me!”

Cammie gasped, “Killing you? Are you crazy? Of course not! Why would we ever-”

There was a rippling through the water and Chase felt something vibrating behind him. He spun around slowly, watching as Yasamin descended gracefully down to their level. Chase had to wonder how big the tank was, for he could not see the surface nor the sides of it. There was just an endless ocean everywhere.

“Yaz!” Chase shouted out, “Did you know about Doc’s plans before- Oof!”

Yaz flew towards him, unbound by the weight of the liquid she soared forward and wrapped her arms around him. The screen of her helmet buzzed like the pixels of a hologram against the side of his face as she tucked her head into his shoulder, and he gently rested his arm on her back as they held each other.

_Wait a minute._

Chase’s fingers ran along the fabric of Yaz’s suit, tracing the fabric lightly until he began to shake. It was _soft_ beneath his hand, not soft like a pillow or a feather, but the liquid against it made the material pliable and a bit silky. It was almost like… _skin?_ He could feel warmth exuding from underneath his hand, despite the cooler temperature of the water, and then Yaz shifted her head and the helmet bumped against his face again and he felt the same warm sensation fluttering through the buzzing hexagons and fading into his skin.

“Chase? Are you okay?” Yaz started to pull back when she felt the tremors going through him, “Cammie, is it a bad reaction to the new fluid?”

“No, it’s-”

“It’s just… I thought she was a hologram,” Chase said, glancing at Cammie before he turned back to Yaz and tightened his fist in the back of her suit, “I thought you were all just projecting yourself in here. I thought-”

“No, no, Chase, we’re real. We’re here,” Yaz’s hands reached up to cup his face, her thumbs careful of the oxygen mask as she caressed him and touched her forehead to his, “Dr. Weller wanted to be the one to show you this, but… He didn’t have time. I was so worried it would never happen, but Cammie made it possible.”

“I can feel you. How can I feel you?”

“Like how our gen:LOCK suits enhance our abilities by sharpening the speed at which our neurons transmit information and commands, Doc was looking into finding ways to _share_ that information, beyond just mind sharing when uploaded. Her suit is sending information out to you, and sending that information to the nerves in your hand and skin,” she explained, swimming a bit closer, “It’s still in a very early stage though. When we transferred you out of the tank, we had to run a series of tests while you were unconscious to see if your nerves still work, and because we didn’t want to risk putting you in a completely new suit and disrupt your easy connection to gen:LOCK, you’re actually experiencing a very dull version of what could be.”

“It’s enough,” Chase choked out, “It’s enough.”

“Oh, are we making you cry?” Cammie teased, floating in front of him with a smirk, “I didn’t expect this big of a reaction. I think you owe me a thank you!”

“Knock it off Cammie,” he batted her away while Yasamin wiped his tears that were being swallowed up by the liquid anyway, “It’s been almost five years since I felt anything like this.”

_I didn’t know I could cry too._

“Besides, you don’t get _all_ the credit,” Yaz said, “You would have never survived in arguing with Holcroft without us.”

“Yo!” Chase shouted up to the surface, “Are the rest of you coming in or not?”

“I suppose that’s our cue,” Valentina stated, “You first, Kazu.”

_“Huh? Why me? Wait! What are you-!”_

There was a loud noise and crackling before Chase saw a shadow appear overhead, before the red suit of Kazu burst through the water and landed in between him and Yasamin. There was a neater entrance made by Valentina, who dove through the surface and shot down towards the bottom of the tank to join them. They floated up to hover by Yasamin as Kazu fumbled to right himself.

“Poor fool couldn’t hook up his harness by himself” Valentina huffed, “Made me do everything.”

_“Maybe if you hadn’t shoved me in, I would’ve figured it out!”  
  
_

“We couldn’t keep them waiting any longer. It’s not my fault you’re so slow.”

“Hurry up and hug Chase already, Kazoo! Before he gets annoyed by all of us bickering and kicks us out!”  
  


Chase breathed out a laugh as he opened up his arm again and drifted towards Kazu, “I could never get tired of you guys.”

Kazu righted himself and swam towards Chase, reciprocating the hug before he pulled back and draped one arm over his shoulders as he attacked his head with a harsh noogie.

“Woah, hey!”

_“That’s for all the trouble you’ve been causing your aniki. Been wanting to do that for a while. It never felt right in the Holon.”_

Chase winced as he lifted his head from underneath the attack but smiled still, “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Do you think we could play baseball here? I can still pitch with this arm.”

“Let’s keep it restricted to our Holons, please. The glass is strong, but it’s not indestructible,” Yasamin chided.

“So there is glass? It seemed infinite in here,” Chase said, looking around. Cammie pulled the command screen out of her watch again and began fiddling.

“Yeah, unfortunately Holcroft wouldn’t let us build you a _lifesize_ ocean, so most of this _is_ an illusion.”

She dropped the imagery and the endless, blue shadows and light refracting through the water shrunk back, revealing the main hangar of RTASA. The tank was still _quite_ big though, and Chase felt as though he was a shark inside an aquarium tank. He could now see above, where a small platform hovered overhead. Built into the top of the tank was a small room that led to where the tank could be opened for maintenance and if people needed to enter.

“But, the good news is, you’ll have full control of the settings, so if you ever want to see our lovely faces outside of the tank, you still can, even if you’re not walking around. And, the illusion works on the outside too. You’ll be able to block Kazoo out if he annoys you too much.”

_“Don’t you mean he’ll block you out?”_

“Nah, I’m too cute for him to want to block out. Besides, if he did, I’ll just disable it. I’m the only one you can’t get rid of!” She said as she pounced on Chase’s back, being careful of the machinery strapped to him.

“Wait a second, the nanotech. Is it even safe for you to be in here?” Chase asked, suddenly drifting away from all of them.

“It’s still dormant, but, just to be safe, that’s another feature of the suits that Doc designed.”

“We have to cover ourselves head to toe to prevent any possible infiltration,” Valentina said, stretching their arm and fingers out through the water as they eyed the fabric of the suit up and down, “The helmets are a bit clunky, but it’s like our Holon heads. Not too uncomfortable.”

“So, you’re safe?”  
  


“As long as we’re dressed like this, and there’s no cracks in the helmets,” Cammie knocked on the outside of the helmet for emphasis, “We’re good.”

“But, just in case,” Yasamin reassured, There’s an emergency system that will draw us all out of the water _if_ it ever detects your nanotech begins to move again.”

Cammie lunged at Chase and tackled him again, this time pushing down on his shoulders and flipping up over him until she was floating high away. Her ponytail swished around inside the helmet, and as it brushed the inside of the container, Chase felt the distinct sensation of hair brushing his forehead as she nearly collided heads with him.

“Let’s have some fun! This is like your, what, third birthday?”

“Fourth if you count the fact that I’m the copy. How long can you all stay in here though?” Chase asked.

“Don’t worry about it! We’ll be with you as long as you want from now on!”

* * *

Or so they had said, but now…

Now Chase was trying to rip himself away from them.

_Again._

“Not when we’re so close! We don’t have time!” She begged the rest of the team as the uptime warning flashed in all of their minds.

Chase had finally agreed to mindshare with her, with all of them. He was finally ready to let them in, and now they were talking about running away only to give Nemesis the perfect opportunity to kill all of them while they were back in their human bodies.

She wouldn’t let them get Chase. She wouldn’t let them kill the rest of her family.

“Yeah you do. You’re going to get the time you need to reset,” Chase’s affirmation made her freeze up as he lowered his hand on her shoulder. She had longed to finally be able to touch him for so long, and after getting the chance in real life, all that remained was in the mindscape. For him to truly open up and accept them all. But, as his hand settled on to her, fear struck her at his next words.

_“You can bet on it.”_

She wanted to scream. Her mouth struggled to speak, eventually all she could get out was, “Chase, _no!”_

If he let go now, if he exceeded uptime…

“This has to stop now!”

“No! Not like this!”

The warning flashed louder in their ears. Yasamin felt her world closing in around her as Chase continued to insist they run and leave him behind.

“You will lose your body!” She shouted exasperated. They had no more time. No more time for her to find the words she wanted to say. To tell him why it wasn’t fair that he ran away from them after he just started to open up. To tell him why she was scared he would die before they got back to him. What happened beyond uptime was unknown. Chase’s body would be rendered completely empty, Chase would never be given a chance to be human again.

It wasn’t fair. She had just gotten the chance to touch him-

“Yaz... I lost that four years ago,” He confessed, “This is me now.”

Yasamin wanted to cry.

“You just said it. I gotta let go, right? Change. “

Yasamin reached out and grabbed his hand, desperately trying to merge with him so she could run his Holon back with them.

“This is not what I meant!”

_But Chase was already pulling away._

* * *

After the battle, Chase stood in front of the empty tank. 

The others left him alone. They had downloaded and gone to their room to retire for the night. But Chase _couldn’t_ download now. He had burned through all his uptime, and now was _stuck_ inside his Holon. In the adrenaline rush of battle, he didn’t mind it. Although they were bulky, they did provide a lot more freedom than his human body.

Perhaps he would have felt that way had his friends _not_ just built him a giant tank to give him so he could hug and be with them. Perhaps he would have felt that way had he _not_ just wasted their gift and time and energy and arguing with Holcroft about how vital this would be to Chase’s recovery, to his improved gen:LOCK performance.

But, there was something about seeing the dark tank, knowing the time his friends and his family had spent trying to make him happy again, that made him tighten his fist against the surface, and shut his eyes.

He regretted it. It was _necessary in the moment_ and it helped them win, but he regretted it. There was a slim chance he could ever return to his body now. There was the matter of Leon too, if he would ever wake up. Chase should be thankful he had a consciousness left at all after how much he did during the battle. At least, he could still ping out in his hologram form to walk about with everyone like he used to. It just felt like he burned through more than just uptime when he left his body behind.

But.

As he thought back to the battle, to the way he had synced up with all of his friends, perhaps it hadn’t been a wasted opportunity.

Mindshare was different than any physical touch. It was more intimate, yet more pure. Chase had spent so long longing to feel touch again, he had been denying perhaps a better alternative all along. When Yasamin had reached out to him at the Battle of the Anvil, had he taken her hand, could they have saved the Doc? Would they have been able to beat Nemesis together in that moment?

No, probably not. Chase was still so angry at that time, he would have just clouded Yasamin’s mind and put her in danger, making the situation worse. He was thankful he didn’t make her first experience inside his head one so full of hatred and confusion. Especially since all that anger was directed at the Doc, it would have made for a terrible mix.

Still, it was strange. Learning he could touch again only for it to be ripped away from him. He did it with his own hands though. This was his own choice he made. He did feel that he was dishonoring Doc’s final gift to him, though. Perhaps, had he not been so self-sacrificing, he could have experienced the touch of more people before the end. They could have all gone back to the Anvil, and maybe he would have gotten a chance to hug Migas again, Leon even, had he not had to upload into the last Holon. Maybe even-

_Miranda._

But, this was the choice he had made. It was something only he could do in the moment, and now he had to live with that choice. And, he and Miranda had chosen to go their separate ways. He couldn’t keep going back on his decisions.

Besides, his body was still _alive_ inside the tank. Just not this one. They had moved him back into the smaller tank when the time came for him to go to the transport ship and upload. Pretty soon, Dr. Jha and everyone else would work on deconstructing the larger one now that it would go unused.

_For the time being,_ he remembered her telling him.

If they continued to advance gen:LOCK, there was hope for Leon to be able to wake up again in his normal body. Perhaps the same could be said for Chase, that one day he _and_ his copy, however many they were, would get to download again and live a normal life. When the Union was gone, and the Polity was restored, Chase hoped that somehow, they _all_ could find peace.

They all were human, after all. Doc had believed in that, had believed that Nemesis could come back to them somehow. Chase had to believe it too, so he could keep moving forward towards tomorrow.

Left alone in the hangar, Chase took his Holon and sat down in front of the tank, his back to it as he went into sleep mode. It was nothing like sleeping as a human, but it would rest his mind enough to help pass the time. He would have to get used to it from now on, having insomnia without the, well, insomnia.

As the light left the eyes of his mech, Chase let himself drift in the mindscape.

* * *

He woke up when he felt something roll off his shoulder.

Reacting quickly, he caught that _thing_ that toppled off his arm and rolled into his hand. His eyes adjusted and zoomed in on the small thing, gasping fully awake when he realized it was Cammie.

“What? What are you doing?”

She was dressed in her pajamas, and the hangar was dark, so it must not be morning yet. He lifted her up closer to his face, but that was when he caught sight of another abnormality, and connected it to the strange weight on his leg.

Draped over his knee, Kazu was asleep. Chase used his other hand to scoop the man up and deposit him beside Cammie in his right hand. They both barely stirred. He searched around in the dark, looking for Valentina and Yasamin. He found Yasamin had barely climbed up onto his form, and instead was just sort of hanging against the hip of his armor, slumped against it. He picked her up too, but was starting to run out of space in his one hand. Now, where was Valentina-

He turned his head, and felt him knock into something before a weight flopped against his shoulder. Valentina had hidden themself on top of the groove created by the armor’s breastplate, leaning into its curve as it curled over his shoulder, like it was a hammock. Chase carefully nudged them off and caught them too, and then with both hands together, lifted his teammates close to his face as he stared down at their sleeping figures.

Because his hands were free of any armor, he could feel their warmth through his metal skin. It wasn’t just a weight pressing down onto his skeletal frame, but instead he could feel them breathing, them moving about as Cammie rolled over again and nearly punched Kazu in the face.

Chase laughed softly as he tried not to wake them all up. He would have to ask them in the morning what brought them all out here. But, for now, he just admired the senses he could feel transmitted through the Holon to his brain, and savored it.

Perhaps _this_ was the last thing that Doc had left them. Chase didn’t doubt that Weller hadn’t considered the possibility that Chase would do something this reckless. Maybe he saw it the moment Chase agreed to the program, saw that he was willing to die again, and decided he wouldn’t let that happen. He created uptime so gen:LOCK candidates wouldn’t overclock themselves to death, and then gave them all a sense of touch. Even though sometimes it caused them pain, he kept it in, to keep them feeling human.

To keep Chase feeling human.

He had to keep feeling human. He had lost his body, but not humanity.

That was what the Union wanted, and as he looked down at the sleeping faces of his family, he refused to give them what they wanted.

Besides, if Cammie was able to interpret Doc’s notes so accurately, who’s to say that she couldn’t go forward and do what even he couldn’t do?

Chase tucked his friends close to his chest, and went into sleep mode again. This time, he dreamed.

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank my beta-reader, Primal, for reading through all forty-pages of this story and helping me hash out ideas as I kept all progress on the story over the past few weeks secret. She's the only one who knew what was going on and she reads all my stories, but I always feel sorry when I hit her with an even longer one than the last! Thank you!


End file.
